Any actor or actor knows the value of a good head shot and the necessity of having them. The head shot represents the actor to agents, casting directors and producers. It shows who they are and what they can portray. The photography involved in getting a good head shot is important and should be done with an experienced photographer who specializes in head shots. Since these are quite different from other types of shots, the photographer must be able to capture the emotion of the client as well as tell the story of who the actor is.
Once a good photographer is found and head shots are taken, they are usually digitized for review. Most actors are struggling to make ends meet until they land their first gig. Getting head shots can be expensive and usually one or two shots are chosen to print and send out. The rest of the shots are still good and can be sent digitally to auditions online. Keeping them on your hard drive takes up a lot of space since these types of shots are large in file size because they are high in quality. Sharing them is important in networking, but most actors do not have the funds to have their own website. Using an image hosting service can solve that problem.
There are paid and free versions to store and share photos. The free version works to allow users to post photos anonymously while the paid version works with the user to create a secure page with multiple albums that can be edited. Links to the albums are provided to the client to use to share, embed in websites and post on forums and blogs. Some sites offer photo blogging and comment sections as well. The fee for image hosting is quite low compared to hosting a full website.
Choose a site that gives you adequate bandwidth and maximum file size. Also, make sure the site is safe and secure and that your pictures are not automatically deleted after a period of time. That usually only happens in the free version. By having all your head shots in one place it makes it easier to send out on open calls and casting call. Sending pictures via email is not feasible since the photos are usually too large for most email systems to handle. If searching for auditions on classified sites such as CraigsList, they have a maximum file size of 150K which most headshots far surpass.
